I made a small artificial to roam around on my website dmewes.com while the browser is open.
His name is Hebbie, and he can roam around and eat the words on the page. Lower-case words reduce hunger, while capitalized words act as a mild poison.
He learns which actions to take through online Hebbian learning. In particular, he learns small world models about how different actions affect his drives in certain situations, and then uses those models to select the most advantageous action to take.
It’s very simple of course, but enough to generate some mildly non-trivial behaviors and learn basic associations within a few minutes.
There’s also a brain monitor where you can check what’s going on and see it learn.
